Subcutaneous Redon drains do not reduce the incidence of surgical site infections after laparotomy. A randomized controlled trial on 200 patients.

Purpose: Surgical site infections (SSI) cause excess morbidity and mortality in modern surgery. Several different approaches to reduce the incidence of SSI have been investigated with variable results.

Method: This is to our knowledge the first systematic randomized evaluation in patients undergoing laparotomy in visceral surgery to clarify whether widely used subcutaneous drains (Redon) affect wound infection as the primary outcome measure.

Results: In 200 patients, we were unable to show a statistically significant impact on the postoperative healing process in patients with the full variety of abdominal surgical interventions. Overall, we observed surgical site infection in 9.5% of all patients (n = 19), of these n = 9 (47.4%) were in the control group without a drain, and 10 (52.6%) were in the experimental group with a Redon drain (not significant).

Conclusion: As this study could not demonstrate a reduction of SSI by the use of Redon drains, there is no indication for prophylactic subcutaneous suction drains after laparotomy.